


Admiration

by Starchart



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canon Compliant, One Shot, Stream of Consciousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-13
Updated: 2018-09-13
Packaged: 2019-07-11 23:39:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15982931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Starchart/pseuds/Starchart
Summary: Petunia Dursley is almost universally reviled by the wizarding world. Here's a PoV from the one person in it who respects and admires her. Not for the reasons you'd expect. (Cannon compliant only in the sense that nothingdirectlycontradicts it.)





	Admiration

You should know that the first face is always the hardest. If you try to become like me, don't ever look them in the eyes. The eyes are the hardest: they ask why. I have the answer, of course, but it isn't pleasant.

I admire you, Petunia Dursley.

As I stand here, in your house, breathing in your memories, I can fancy that I know you, perhaps better than anyone in your life.

Lily never saw you. She never saw how the gulf between you two grew, never understood why it existed at all. Once she left for school, she never did anything anymore without a swish of your wand; you could always see her fingers twitch, waving a phantom stick of wood, always see the disappointment that she did not even consciously register herself.

Lily, coming home to do her schoolwork with charmed quills, Lily eagerly opening Christmas presents from friends, presents that could not, should not exist. Magic crept like a vine into Lily's heart, turning her eyes from you.

It wouldn't have been so bad, perhaps, if she hadn't lost her wonder. But the first time she got upset because the animated metal bird she had received for her birthday from a friend refused to recognize her, that is when you knew. She no longer understood what she had. She never had to work for it. 

Perhaps if she had lived, she would have grown to understand, but she did not. And she would not have; the correspondence between you two as mothers proved as much.

Lily refused to understand you in your time of need, didn't she? She couldn't anymore, could she? Dudley was supposed to be your first—the first in a long line of little feet. But when you spoke to Lily of your sorrow, Lily couldn't empathize with your difficult pregnancy, couldn't understand anymore how you could almost die. Such worries were not in her world, were they?

And when the birth had complications, when Dudley might be affected, Lily spoke of charms and potions that could help and for some time you had hope. For some time, you dared to think that cheating fate might be worth it, if only for your son. But when, after months of silence later, you wrote back to her, she offhandedly told you that they were only for wizards. That was when you began to hate her, wasn't it?

You couldn't really hate her. Lily was still your sister. But you hated magic, which became much the same.

And Severus, too, is a fool. Severus saw the letter you wrote to Dumbledore, didn't he? But he didn't understand it. How could he? You are so far outside of his comprehension that he could not even begin to see the truth.

Everything you have is your own. You have worked for it, and it has come. Fate has not always been kind, but though you have been tempted, you have never cheated.

And so we come to Harry, don't we?

Little Harry Potter.

You knew as soon as you saw him, what Hagrid would say would be true. That his name was down for Hogwarts even before he was born. You knew that you could not keep him away. You knew that you should not get attached, attached like you were to Lily, because you would never be allowed to keep him. And when you gave him up, you knew better than to object to him going.

But you could make him wonder, make him marvel at magic. You could make sure that everything he worked for was his own. And so you set out to raise a _wizard_ , different from raising a child.

That was the reason you gave to Vernon for his chores, wasn't it? And it worked, too. He did grow to understand what it was to work for everything you had. He grew to understand the smell of the garden in the morning, the smell of food he cooked himself, both which Lily had soon forgotten; she didn't have to touch anything anymore, once she was a _witch_ , did she? You saw that when you visited her.

And if you spoiled Dudley because of circumstances that you wonder if you could have controlled better, well, that was understandable.

Ignoring Harry's Christmases and birthdays, less so. But you were simply protecting yourself from the pain of seeing Harry toss aside your gifts like you saw Lily toss aside your parents's, weren't you?

Letting Dudley punch Harry was inadvisable, but you couldn't let him get too close. Better Dudley hated Harry than come to depend upon him.

And perhaps you were hard on Harry, and you are ungenerous to a fault, but I also know that you are brave. Very few muggleborn are able to see the trap inside a Hogwarts letter, very few children are able to turn them down.

You still have yours, don't you? You opened it, understood what it was, believed it, but you couldn't leave Lily behind, not at that point. No one realized that it was you long and craning neck which spotted trouble before Lily ever had to look, did they? And the bird frightened you, and you realized that it was unnatural, that it was outside of your world. And so you stayed.

But you would have gone for Lily, wouldn't you? You would have hated the magic, probably failed out, but you would have stayed with your family. I cannot quite bring myself to say that it was a moment of weakness. You wanted to stay with your family. I too understand the lure of family. 

That's why you wrote to Dumbledore, and that is the letter he answered. Severus Snape loved the magical part of his heritage, and didn't understand how anyone could decide not to follow in that path. That's why he couldn't understand that Dumbledore was quoting the by-laws at you, saying that only children of magical ability, aged eleven years old were able to begin to attend Hogwarts. He thought it was that you didn't have magic; he didn't realize that it was simply too late.

You never told Lily how they rejected you, did you? You didn't want to spoil her new life, to make her into any more of an outcast. You told Harry his parents were drunks as he was growing. That was a lie, but, in a way, the truth. They were the outcasts of your world, as surely as they would have been if their troubles had been with a bottle. You tried to warn Harry as he left, too, that his parents got "blown up". You knew it wouldn't keep him away, but you had to try. He had to know what he was facing, even if you couldn't tell him everything, even if you couldn't keep him from it.

You told Vernon everything before he met your sister. And he understood. He understood that this was your secret shame and that it was a part of you that was not yours, would never be yours. And he loved you, in spite of it, because of how you managed it. He has secrets of his own, doesn't he? But the two of you never strayed from keeping only what you had worked for.

And so I admire you, Petunia Dursley. You never turned your back on where you came from. You never tried to pretend that you were something you were not. I admire that.

And that was the end of it. You never did use magic, did you, not even out of curiosity?

I see the fear in your face. You are trying to shield your family from me. You are the only one who could even try to stop me, but still the only magic I can see is the weak rudiments of a magical shield in your mind, created simply because you love order, created to better fit into the world you were born into, the world you have chosen to say with. Do not despair! You have worked for it; it is yours.

Would you find it strange that when your sister was in almost the same situation, she did not use her wand? For all that she despised the muggle ways of doing things, facing me, she simply stood between her son and me and begged for his life. She was piling up boxes in front of the door with her hands before I arrived. She was a muggle in the end, playing the part of a witch. I didn't spare her. 

But you . . . You do not beg. You simply look at me with fear, yes, but also with dignity, trying to shield your family in the only way you know how. You are more a muggle than she, and yet a braver woman. Your life is meaningless. But I admire you all the same.

I think I will spare you, Petunia Dursley. 

You always wondered if it was your fault that Dudley couldn't be healed. If you'd married a wizard, perhaps the potions would have worked on him. Perhaps.

But you are forgetting yourself. Lily never even sent you potions to try. And Dudley is, after all, a squib, not a muggle as your sister always believed. 

As I move my wand, you flinch, even though I know you can tell my intent, and I wonder at myself, a moment, both at the differences between our worlds and at what I am about to do. Dudley Dursley is a blundering fool, tied to myself by a bond of common, dirty blood. But then, we were born to different worlds. And it is only fair that we have equal chances of success in each. 

You will think that it is only a dream, perhaps. You will not tell anyone about it. Neither will your family.

The blood wards couldn't keep me out; you and I share the same blood now, after all, and have for years. As soon as I learned that it was only blood wards protecting your house, I came. Potter will return here soon, for his last summer, and I had hoped to ambush him when he arrived. But I will do you the courtesy of not attacking him while he is a guest in your house. It would be poor form to spill our shared blood on your carpet.

And so I leave, closing the door gently behind me.

I admire you, after all.

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, this is narrated by Lord Voldemort, albeit probably a more sane version than exists in the books. I take this as a possible explanation for Petunia's actions, not necessarily a likely one.


End file.
